The trajectory for most pop acts of the past was to have several years of non-success and then make it big and enjoy some time in the sun being the latest cool new thing. This is when all the half-finished ideas stashed away from the years and years of notes come back to the fore and now you can use those to release your Nevermind, or your Lexicon of Love.
However once that rich seam of material ends, you have to come up with new stuff. And that can be pretty good too – after all, you now have Rick Spangle on your side and your latest video has Martin Scorsese behind the camera.
Now let’s go forward a year or so. We are now in the Jazz Odyssey years, the pop star is wearing a smock and lives with a yak. He distances himself from his successful pop music and embarks on a different journey. Nobody goes with him and debts force him to dust off the old gear and get the old band back together. This is the post-imperial phase and although the light isn’t shining as brightly as before – there are songs that are just as good as those that made the artist a star. That’s what I am after. I am putting together a Spotify playlist of such songs and would welcome your suggestions. You probably won’t know most of these, but they’re good songs:
King Without a Crown – ABC
Stand Above Me – OMD
Touch – Kim Wilde
The Boy Who Came Back – Marc Almond
Skin Trade – Duran Duran
We Take Mystery to Bed – Gary Numan
I nominate Alice Cooper – Pain (from 1980s Flush The Fashion). Alice was deep in a fog of booze and noticeably creaking since Welcome To My Nightmare’s closing notes.
Flush The Fashion may not have been a “return to form” but Pain was the best song for a few years (and still better than what came later – yes, I’m talking to you “Poison”)
This was before his brief renaissance with Poison, then. OK – I’ll give it a whirl.
New Order – Regret.
And nothing* memorable for the last 31 years.
(*) Well, alright, an EP or a mini-album’s worth.
I remember hearing Crystal – the opening track of Get Ready, thining “This is going to be fantastic”. It wasnt – but Crystal is still one of their best IMO.
I was surprised at the quality of Get Ready. I think Crystal counts.
I have an abiding fondness for 60 Miles An Hour.
I really like Get Ready, all of it. Regret, from the Republic album, is a brilliant single but I’ve played Get Ready miles more as an album. Crystal, 60 Miles an Hour and Turn My Way are all great.
And the first three tracks on the album. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to ‘side two’ more than once. Rock the Shack… well, I suppose it’s better than Jetstream from the next LP. Some of the Get Ready-era B-sides were better than the album tracks but come from a variety of sources and didn’t fit the album.
Regret is one of my fave NO tracks. After years away doing Electronic, Revenge, etc, I had low expectations and it was much better than I had hoped. Sadly, it’s the only above-average track on Republic, to my ears. They were still great live, though, although it wasn’t to last.
Hooky’s touring Get Ready in its entirely with The Light next year. Going to be a great show – he’s often talked up the album as one of his favourites
I did not know that. Mind you, I didn’t go when he played the Junction in Cambridge a couple of years ago as I don’t like the venue.
Stiff Little Fingers – Guitar And Drum (2003)
After splitting in 1983, and unable to get The Big Wheel out of small clubs and on to a record company, Jake Burns quit to be come a Radio 1 Producer.
Stiff Little Fingers reformed in 1987 with the express intention of getting enough money to get back home to Belfast for Christmas, and then started decided to reform proper and record new “stuff” in 1991.
By 1999, they’d landed a contract at EMI (more out of keeping the old stuff in print, than EMI actively pushing the new signing), and in 2003 put out a record with as much anger, tunefulness and righteousness as their old stuff (maybe now imbued with experience).
It probably seemed like their last shot in 2003. Here we are though. 21 years later…
Can I suggest a Zeppelin tune – I’m Gonna Crawl from ‘In Through the Out Door’.
Most contributors here would suggest that Zep’s best years are on the first four, ie all over by 1971.
A few individuals might consider the next two or three albums to be ‘imperial phase’, peaking with Graffiti and running down the other side. Very, very few would rate …Out Door as a career high.
And yet, and yet…here’s an almost perfect slow blues, the way they used to do it, back in the day – the last track on their last (non-compilation) studio album.
In Through the Out Door may not be a career high, but is a much better album than it’s given credit for
Agreed.
OK – I can put that one in.
‘Nugget’ definitely implies single track, rather than album.
Some suggestions:
Crystal – New Order, going to disagree with @fentonsteve, Republic just about holds up as an album. Get Ready is very post-imperial.
Avalon (title track) – the merest breeze of silk in the wind, after the a bit meh Manifesto and Flesh and Blood.
Beautiful Day – U2. Their last track that in anyway ruled, after the again meh Pop.
Chemical Brothers – No Geography (title track again). Awesome. In a way the last 2-3 albums weren’t.
Charlatans – Let the Good Times Be Never Ending.
I would say Roxy Music kept the standard up all the way. A great run and rare in that it’s all the band’s albums. No drop off. Flesh and Blood is superb as is Avalon.
I agree. Manifesto is their weakest for me, but any album that includes Angel Eyes and Dance Away and deeper cuts like Ain’t That So is still pretty good.
The title song is monumental (please nobody say ‘no, it’s Manifesto’ 😉)
I don’t know the last two so I will give them a go. Crystal I have already included.
I would say that U2 and Roxy – at the time of those songs – hadn’t finished being at the top of their game just yet.
I would pick different tracks off those Chemicals and Charlatans albums (MAH and Come Home Baby respectively), while still agreeing that your choices are great tunes. Which suggests that they are pretty good albums!
Boy George – Bow Down Mister
Written by Boy George (credited to the pseudonym Angela Dust) and released under the name of Jesus Loves You, his first post Culture Club project. Chris Mellor from Record Mirror wrote, “Indian dance music, hippy chic George Harrison style Hare Krishna chants mingle with beautiful sitars and Boy George’s inimitable vocal style to create something quite stunning.” It features great backing vocals by Asha Bhosle (as in Brimful of Asha) who described Bow Down Mister as “the most perfect song I have ever done … a song I treasure above everything else in my life.”
Another that comes to mind is Sing The Changes by The Fireman (ie Paul McCartney with Youth). One of my favourite McCartney tunes.
Bow Down Mister did fleetingly occur to me. It was nice to hear that again.
Nobody thought anything like Sweet Sounds Of Heaven was possible from The Stones at this late stage after so many years, but there it is. A decent album but this track is superior.
Yes! See my post on it last year. But then bloody Mick decided not to do it when I saw them live this year!
I’ll shove it in then. I liked the Angry song but only in a couple-of-listens kinda way.
I thought Bowie’s Where Are We Now and Blondie’s Maria were as good as anything from their respective imperial phases.
Good choices. I also think Bowie’s Blackstar and Lazarus have to be ranked in his top drawer.
Ah but Bowie doesn’t count, surely? I know he had several stinkers and the odd fallow period but he’s Bowie. His entire life was an imperial phase.
He made the point himself that his biggest-selling LP (Let’s Dance) “only” sold about 5 million. Milli Vanilli did better than that.
“Tonight” and “Never Let Me Down” are pompous but hardly imperial. They sound like coke and self-hatred to me.
I’d say Bowie very definitely had an imperial phase. 1969 to 1983 (or stretch to ’86 to include Absolute Beginners). After that his commercial appeal wained dramatically (see album sales: https://chartmasters.org/cspc-david-bowie-popularity-analysis/#original_albums_sales). I know some people will staunchly defend some of those later albums, but the fact is he lost my interest after Absolute Beginners and I think that’s what really counts. So, yes, David Bowie, imperial phase, 1969 to 1983 and then a barren wilderness of non-selling, non-Gary pleasing albums until Where Are They Now came out and everyone and myself said “wow, I wasn’t expecting that level of brilliance so long after his imperial phase”. Yes.
Heathen was one of his very best, I thought. I think I might play it tonight.
The Sisters of Mercy – More. I don’t know if a band with only three albums can be said to have an imperial phase, but Vision Thing is definitely regarded as a step down from FALAA and Floodland (easily their best). Much of Vision Thing is standard hard rock rather than their previous gothic sonic cathedrals, but More is an absolute stormer.
Depeche Mode – Wrong. I expect even Dave and Martin would accept that their imperial phase probably ended with Songs of Faith and Devotion, but Wrong (from Sounds of the Universe, 16 years on from SOFAD) proves they still know how to put together a nicely dramatic slab of synth-led oomph.
Wrong is completely brilliant. Very much top drawer Depeche Mode. I’d also have Ghosts Again in there too from 2022.
I would have posted Wrong but you’ve done it for me. An absolute banger.
Uberlin – REM. Way past their best – but this is a great song which would have been a highlight on Green.
Right – I’ll include that one too. Talking of REM, I really like Ebow the Letter. That was one of those strange songs that became a hit due to the momentum of the band’s name but would have been an LP track in the early years. See also Innuendo by Queen.
For those two bands, I’d also include Supernatural Superserious and These Are The Days Of Our Lives respectively.
If we take Monster as not being imperial (which it definitely isn’t) the whole of New Adventures is magnificent to me, not sure they did anything after worth listening to
I’ve included the REM one.
Echo and the Bunnymen came back in 2000ish with Nothing Lasts Forever and Gary mentions Maria by Blondie. They were both great comeback singles but I am thinking that successful and quite well known comeback singles are not what I am after.
What I am looking for is a mid-80s album track by the Rubettes, say, that happens to be an absolute banger. Or a comeback single that was great but nobody bought it. I’m making this up as I go along.
Ribbons of Steel by (x)Propaganda. I’m a bit biased because I know the vocalist on this track. But it’s great, real shiver down the spine stuff.
Just gave it a listen – lovely song,
I did like, and still like, Don’t Mess With Me also.
I reckon the whole album could count @leffe-gin. It’s an absolute belter. I see it as the proper follow up to A Secret Wish even if it is without the boys.
Indeed, it’s very good, regardless of the band history and all that stuff. However, since it’s like a new start, maybe it’s not suitable for this list?
Current Mojo has a review of a new Propaganda album. Mertens and Dörfer this time with a new female vocalist. Crikey! Didn’t see that coming
Meanwhile, does this make the grade. Simple Mind’s imperial phase had been ended pretty swiftly by the clattering of Mel Gaynor’s drums on Sparkle in the Rain (see also @fentonsteve) but a few years later off the execrable Real Life came this, See the Lights….
Could they be more U2?
Ok then – I don’t like that album but on its own that’s a nice ‘un.
@leedsboy
Who are U2?
@Freddy-Steady they were the band Wings could have been….
Tom Petty has loads of hidden gems post-Wildflowers. Hard to pick one, but let’s take Trip to Pirate Cove from Mojo.
Thanks – I have a soft spot for him, so happy to put it on the playlist.
I’ll throw an example in by the biggest act of them all, the Beatles.
With all the attention focused on “Free As A Bird”, “Christmas Time (Is Here Again)” slipped out on the flip of the 45 (and on the CD single) in 1995.
Never, to my knowledge, released since, it is a mid-60s Paul gem in the style of “Good Day Sunshine” or “Hello Goodbye”, and serves the purpose of being better than all those Xmas songs that will soon be assaulting us, and being a genuine addition to the Beatles’ canon years after the event. Far more so than “Free As A Bird”, “Real Love” and “Now and Then”.
I’ve only heard it once on British radio when Gary Crowley (not a natural go-to source for me) opened with it after all the football scores had come in one Saturday evening, and I’d forgotten to switch over to 6-0-6. When he played it (about ten/fifteen years ago), he couldn’t have played a more out-there or unexpected Xmas song. Most of the audience must have been thinking “What the hell is this? It sounds like the Beatles!”
It’s hardly a song, just incredibly repetitive, not a great Christmas song at all, but was nice to hear. But as it was recorded in 67, probably was part of their imperial phase
From memory, the main refrain was used in the 1967 Christmas fan club disc, albeit chopped up, but the Free As a Bird B side edited it all together and added messages from the 1966 disc onto the end.
Yes not only recorded in 67 but released then too.
I didn’t know this existed! It’s sweet and funny but I don’t think I need to hear it again.
I’ll play it in December.
I don’t know what Dai’s going on about, what’s a Christmas song meant to sound like? Wagner?
Fits in perfectly with the Sesame Street Xmas song, and it’s already in place alongside various Rockabilly and Doo Wop comps., and the Spector, Elvis and the Booker T. & The MGs’ 66 Xmas album, which I’ve been saving since the summer and I’ve never heard.
You said it’s better than all the other regular Xmas songs. It’s not even better than Wonderful Christmastime! It is fairly charming, but extremely lightweight and one can see why it was hidden on a Fan Club disc. In it’s favour is that hardly anyone has ever heard it, but, say, Merry Xmas Everybody, now that’s a great Christmas single, but, yes, has been somewhat weakened after hearing it a million times.
(also released in full on the Beatles Christmas discs a few years ago, all on coloured 7 inch singles so nothing to concern you with)
https://www.thesdeshop.com/products/the-beatles-christmas-records-limited-edition-coloured-vinyl-7-box?srsltid=AfmBOooVk5egjCILc08EWjNzRfrUU96tn_P0_XbPFoGux93epSrdWNbt
The Kinks, from their last proper album, Scattered.
Wasn’t expecting The Monkees to drop their best song in 2016:
And Ringo put out a fantastic song (written/produced by T Bone Burnett & Daniel Tashian) last week:
Good call on The Kinks. Phobia is a decent album hidden behind a horrendous cover. They hid that song at the end of the album for some reason.
First two are great (what’s Elon Musk doing in the Kinks video at about 57 seconds in?). That Monkees album was surprisingly good. I didn’t really like the Ringo one, I’m afraid.
Me & Magdalena is brilliant.
Me & Magdalena has to be one of the most unexpectedly brilliant songs of the last decade. It has absolutely no right to be as lovely as it is.
Who would have though Monkees x Death Cab For Cutie would be a thing let alone a thing that wonderful? The harmonies are achingly brilliant. I’m off to play it some now…
“Love is a Bourgeois Concept” is the best Pet Shop Boys song you may not have heard, from their 2012 (I think) album Electric. Apart from anything else, it features the line “drinking tea like Tony Benn”.
An absolute corker.
I’d go for Hoping for a miracle from Hotspot, there’s usually one cracker even on their later meh albums
That song is a triumph. They used the word “doss” for lying around as well, which I hadn’t heard since school.
Prince has loads of ‘post-imperial’ gems (most people consider his imperial phase to have ended by 1990; I strongly disagree, but we could be here forever).
With the above caveat, I would suggest two from his final album, Hit’n’Run 2:
Baltimore, which is a powerful protest song created in the wake of the murders of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, and predating Black Lives Matter. Simple, effective and righteously angry.
Rock-‘n’-Roll Love Affair, which is one of those effortlessly cool pop songs that is redolent of P’s imperial phase – an irresistible groove with swinging brass punctuation, and witty lyrics delighting in his signature wry lasciviousness –
‘He said, “My faith keep me from willin’ But U know that I’m able
& if there’s some room
I’d like 2 sit at ur table”
& she said, “It’s tight
But I think can fit U in” ‘
This also – his previous album NEWS is broadly agreed to be one of his very worst, so this was a pretty good comeback
Baltimore is one of my absolute favourite Prince tracks
I really like both of those – thanks for the recommendations.
How have we got so far without the man whose imperial period was shorter and burnt brighter than anyone else’s….
At least 11 years after there’s this..
Suspicious Minds came from the same Elvis In Memphis sessions, but personally I prefer this.
Not forgetting If I Can Dream from the ’68 ‘Comeback Special’.
Similar to Bowie and Queen, Elvis is too big a cultural icon to be on this playlist I think.
However, I can imagine how exciting Suspicious Minds must have been when he first did it. Great, great song.
Surely the Big O’s revival before his death would count? I’d say even though Bongo and Edge wrote it, his performance of “She’s A Mystery To Me” more than counts as a post imperial phase banger
Black & White Night (with Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, and many others I’ve forgotten) should count if only for putting him back in the spotlight.
Travelling Wilburys Volume 1 should count too
Love that song. The Petty/Lynn/Orbison-penned You Got it is even better.
See my Elvis comment above.
These are the kind of threads I hate, because it always takes me til a fortnight after it’s died to come up with a good answer. Right now, this is the best I can do:
(Dubstar – Token)
After many years of under achievement post Sleeps With Angels the NATDD hitmaker has had some late moments with his team ups with Nils Lofgren jamming away, such as on Barn. I really think the track Chevrolet is worth hearing.
NATDD? (Excuse my ignorance…)
Needle & The Damage Done, I’m guessing.
Of course! Thanks! Not one of my “go to” NY songs…
On further reflection: I’d call him the RANFTR Hitmaker, among others…
HOG hitmaker, surely?
Fair comment, if literal: the “Ditch Trilogy” weren’t exactly hits…but then, neither was NATDD.
All these years have I completely misunderstood the subtleties of the AW ‘hitmaker’ meme?
Irony was employed.
Huzzah!
Laura Nyro did not stop making great music in 1971. She took a break, then returned to the music business on her own terms.
This was used, I think, over the credits of Lethal Weapon II, but is one of George’s best songs. I first heard it on Best of Dark Horse and couldn’t understand why it hadn’t been huge. Bit of a precursor to the Wilburys to my ears..
Will, I wonder, the Cure album, pending, fit into this schedule. The track already released and discussed certainly does.
I am finding older musicians constantly delivering of late. Willie Nelson’s forthcoming is superb, if all covers, but some unexpected included within the mix. The 70 year old Steve Knightley, having hung up Show of Hands, has both a new band and his solo career on the go. His album of a couple of weeks back, The winter Yards is superb. I am uncertain if either Michael Kiwanuka count as old or Gillian Welch counts as having had her Imperial done and dusted, but I have hopes for each of their prospective. (Yes, I know the GW is streamable but I await my hard copy.)
This was on a recent electro-pop CD curated by Jon Savage. Soft Machine survived for an eon, and although Karl Jenkins has his admirers I guess their imperial period should include Wyatt, Ratledge or Hopper at least. But this 1978 Euro trance disco single is very groovy.
I’m not sure The Bible really had an imperial phase, in terms of success, but it would have been their two late-80s albums of ‘Dan-adjacent indie-pop. They split, got back together for a reunion gig in the mid-90s, and released an EP featuring this squealing, thumping, put-down.
The Bible – Mosquito.
Not on Spotty, it seems. I have put in another track instead – Honey Be Good.
Honey Be Good is their nearly hit from their second album (produced by Steve Earle) before they split (for the first time). An appearance on Wogan, stalled at number 54.
I think I’m partially responsible for them hitting that coveted 54 spot. I have a cd single/EP with Honey be Good and I think at least one other, possibly Graceland? @fentonsteve will probably tell me that’s a reissue or summat but it’s a great song.
That’ll be the Graceland (new version), last-ditch attempt cd single on Chrysalis.
The first album came out on Norwich indie label Backs, second on Ensign, then Chrysalis took over Ensign. Then the madness started – rather than continue with recording the third album (I have a studio DAT tape, it would have been fab), they had to re-record the debut album with a producer; Chrysalis compiled a ‘best of’ album (from only two albums); singles were re-released; their support band (Deacon Blue) took off; they went to Germany to do a TV promo which turned out to be a talent show, won by a magician wearing a rotating bow tie. They split up on the flight home.
I once played my tall chum the DAT of the four completed tracks from the third album and he agreed it sounded great, but has such bad memories of the time that it has stayed in the can ever since.
Hmm, how not to be a success pt 257. A bit Spinal Tap in places alas.
I can play bass along to Honey be Good but that shouldn’t lessen its majesty.
It sounds comical written down, though it must have been tragic to actually live through it.
Yes. Sorry , I didn’t intend to trivialise it.
It is alright, he can laugh about it now. He’s a very humorous fellow, when “off”. I keep nagging him to write a book, but he bought a recording studio instead.
Neil Diamond recorded two albums with Rick Rubin, and Home Before Dark was the second, from 2008. It went to No. 1 in both the US and UK, and I love both the Rubin albums. The approach was similar by Rubin – close mic the singer and get them playing acoustic guitar and get them doing what they do best, with additional instrumentation kept to a minimum. Diamond has made great records and absolute stinkers, but these two records are highly recommended from the end of his career. It was a shame they didn’t do more – the next album was Dreams, which is mostly covers and a huge disappointment.
I would suggest Dusty Springfield’s post-imperial phase started with the Pet Shop Boys – produced ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This’ from 1987. Dusty’s imperial phase was very much 1963 to 1966, followed up by her TV show and ‘Dusty In Memphis’, after which the hit singles pretty much dried up. ‘What Have I Done To Deserve This’ got to the Top 3 on both sides of the Atlantic.
I think 80s Dusty deserves to be there somewhere, but WHIDTDT is really well known, I think.
I have added “Nothing Has Been Proved” from the Scandal soundtrack.
I think Blondie’s ‘Maria’ must qualify for this category. How to make a comeback…
Also, Pollinator is an incredibly good late-period album overall, though doesn’t have a standout ‘single’.
Johnny Cash – Hurt
Or take a pick of anything from The American Recordings.
The other one I’d shout for was left off the album(s) – Redemption Song (with Joe Strummer)
Redemption Song by Joe Strummer is brilliant. Given the patchy nature of late Clash and his solo stuff, it absolutely hits the brief.
I’m not a fan of it at all. I don’t like it as a choice of song to cover anyway, as it’s too much of a well-worn busker/campfire song, also I think no one has ever come remotely close to being as good as the original. For post-Clash Strummer I’d choose Tony Adams.
Bhindi Bhagwan for me.
So it was a bit of a Clash Cash clash, if not quite a silk sash bash? 😏
You could go for Thunderstruck but I think this song wouldn’t be out of place on Highway to Hell
and this – which I think was Jane’s Addiction’s comeback in the early 2000s is as good as anything from Ritual.
Not even “Soy Bomb” can kill the vibe here – the fecking amazing Time Out Of Mind opener
Here it is ! “Enjoy”…
How can All of My Heart be said to be from ABC’s post-imperial phase when it’s on their most critically acclaimed and biggest selling album?
Ah. right – erm…I did add a few on a bit of a whim when I compiled it.
It’s on side 2, the imperial phase was side 1 😉
On reflection: Post-Imperial Phase Nuggets sounds like a great lost live album by The Mighty Fall…
🙂
A mini-imperial phase by itself
I personally think The Waterboys are in a never-ending imperial phase, but am aware that plenty would scoff at the notion. However, this song is an indisputable gem:
And this guy concurs, bigly:
https://dexterces.wordpress.com/2021/10/12/why-the-waterboys-long-strange-golden-road-is-the-best-rock-song-of-the-last-ten-years/
To return to REM, Imitation of Life is certainly from the dusty end of their career but is comfortably in my REM top 10.
It also has a brilliant and very (re)watchable video:
Uncertain quite when Christy Moore’s imperial phase might have been, but, in his 57th year of performing, A Terrible Beauty starts as if it could be his best. A notoriously patchy performer, his mix of defiant politicisism of angry green republicanism and whimsical paddywhackery can sometimes exasperate, at least on record. A Terrible Beauty, out this week kicks off with a terrific run of 5 superb songs, then 3 good ones, two OK ones and then two dreadful ones. But I’m tempted to call it at least a return to form. Half way through it was a cert for an album of the year, but will now only be in the double figures, I fear.
Possibly no band fell from grace as much as Jefferson Airplane/Starship with the dross they put out in the ’80s, but when Paul Kantner revived the name in the ’90s and beyond there truly were some joyous gems. Check out this Weavers cover from the last album he recorded under the monicker. It even recycles the Volunteers banjo lick David Crosby taught him:
Morrissey. First of the Gang to Die. 2004.
He’s a divisive figure is Mr Mozza
(RD states the obvious again)
But, yes that one was a cut above last few outings from his best album since Vauxhall & I
(and still waiting for it to be bettered by later releases)
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Songs From The West Coast (2001) by Elton John. The whole album is amongst his best but American Triangle is devastating.